One Thing`s Perfectly Clear: `Nixon Live!` Fails

November 14, 1991|By Sid Smith, Entertainment writer.

Richard Nixon, and all that he represents, could provide marvelous theatrical material now, offering a new look at a maligned bad guy whose evildoings are given a different perspective by all the political skulduggery since.

But in ``Nixon Live! The Future Is Now,`` a new show at the Organic Theater, writer-performer Frank Melcori provides a Nixonian impersonation that`s restrained, respectful, almost cuddly in its revisionist kindliness, and, as a result, both boring and altogether false.

There`s none of the exaggerated personal attributes, none of the paranoia or defensive pretension of this famous man. Melcori sees Nixon as an average guy who happened to become president and then go down in the biggest disgrace in American history.

All that takes a back seat to a shy, awkward, actually loving man who just wants to sit in a lounge and hear ``I Could Have Danced All Night`` from ``My Fair Lady.``

Not a particularly impressive Nixon look-alike, nor much of an imitator, Melcori tries to make up those shortcomings with his intriguing setup. He has Nixon visiting Chicago and slipping away for a few drinks at a lounge. There, he hovers about piano player Jimi Jihad, whose head is swathed in Arabian scarfwear and who manages to make every song request sound like a Middle Eastern chant.

There is a built-in humor to the situation, but Melcori`s script doesn`t provide many more laughs. He and Jihad exchange rambling, colorless quips, skirting many famous topics of the Nixon era, including the Checkers speech, Watergate, the China trip and the media. (Curiously, Spiro Agnew isn`t mentioned.)

The whole thing is set up as a light-hearted, friendly cabaret in the cavernous Organic, but Melcori`s few payoffs are strangely cerebral insights, his version of Nixon-think. (He carries an impressive storehouse of Nixon facts and figures in his head.)

He`s eloquent when discussing Nixon`s theories of life-Let`s get out of the TV studios and back into the real world, goes one diatribe-but he doesn`t have the zingers and sharp one-liners most audiences would expect these days from a show built around the thorniest of ex-presidents.

A question-and-answer period after the brief act falls short as well. What`s in the 18 1/2-minute gap? ``My mother`s recipe for chicken

cacciatore.`` But when an audience member hit him with a really unusual one-Is it true he`s writing an opera with Peter Sellars?-Melcori dropped the ball and simply said, ``No.``

``NIXON LIVE! THE FUTURE IS NOW``

A show about the ex-president starring Frank Melcori as Nixon, with Jimi Jihad on piano. Written by Melcori and directed by Richard Fire. Playing at the Organic Theater, 3319 N. Clark St., at 8 p.m. Thursdays and Saturdays, 9 p.m. Fridays and 7 p.m. Sundays, through Dec. 29. Length of performance, 1:30. Tickets are $10. Phone 312-327-5588.